Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz considered sport to be a surrogate for war that separated aggression from hatred. Not everyone agreed. Here's a photio that resembles a scene from WW1: Toronto Wolfpack playing on a muddy field in the north of England.

The Wolfpack is the first North American team to play in the Rugby Football League system, the first fully professional rugby league team in Canada and the world's first trans-Atlantic rugby league team. Its opening season ended in glory.

Cool shot and good story.
The Rugby League World Cup is being played in Australia and New Zealand at the moment.
USA played Fiji last night. U.S got smashed, no disgrace, the Fijians can really play.

Hi Andy. The photo is so-so, taken on an iPad still from live-streamed video. Hence the lack of clarity. The pitch was a mudbath, which connoted an impression of WW1 trench warfate. I accentuated this impression via post-processing.

I became a rugby league fan while living in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in the 1970s. Lack of media coverage meant that the game bacame invisible to me after moving to Canada. Until this year, that is, when the Toronto Wolfpack became operational. You can read about its early sucess and its hopes and dreams HERE. It's a remarkable story with a strong Australian connection.

Next season, Toronto Wolfpack play in the same tier as my old team, Dewsbury Rams. Which team to I cheers for?. Cheers, Mike

Hi Andy. The photo is so-so, taken on an iPad still from live-streamed video. Hence the lack of clarity. The pitch was a mudbath, which connoted an impression of WW1 trench warfate. I accentuated this impression via post-processing.

Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz considered sport to be a surrogate for war that separated aggression from hatred. Not everyone agreed. Here's a photio that resembles a scene from WW1: Toronto Wolfpack playing on a muddy field in the north of England.

The Wolfpack is the first North American team to play in the Rugby Football League system, the first fully professional rugby league team in Canada and the world's first trans-Atlantic rugby league team. Its opening season ended in glory.

Cheers
Mike

This reminds me of World War I. I was not there but this has that mood of the trench warfare and endless mud!

Our purpose is getting to an impressive photograph. So we encourage browsing and then feedback. Consider a link to your galleries annotated, C&C welcomed. Images posted within OPF are assumed to be for Comment & Critique, unless otherwise designated.

Thanks for the comments Jerome, Asher, Charlotte, Roshni. Because I wasn't sure that the sport/trench warfare connotation would resonate with viewers and with Rugby League unknown or unloved by most sport enthusiasts across the globe, I left the image to languish in a 'do nothing with' archive for several months. I'm pleased it made an impression on all of you. Cheers, Mike

Some photographs aim to create works of art. Others aim to provide a visual record of something unusual and/or important. Oh sure, I know that one person's work of art seems like crap to another and what is unusual and/or important depends on experience, context and values. The following images are far from works of art, being photos of a live internet broadcast of a Rugby League game, post-processed to capture feebly the spirit of a sport played professionally in England since 1895.

However, the images do provide a record of a happening that's not just unusual but unique. The event was the never-to-be-repeated first home game of the Toronto Wolfpack. The Wolfpack is the first professional rugby team in Canada (i.e., Rugby League or Rugby Union); the only professional Rugby team now operating in North America (i.e., the American PRO Rugby Union League, which included five teams, died ignominiously after its inaugural season in 2016); and the world's first transatlantic professional sport team (i.e., a team that plays in a league across the Atlantic).

The images show:

A breakaway by Toronto (in white) against Oxford

A brawl toward the end of the game.
Canadians know that a good game demands a good brawl - a lesson learned from ice hockey :)

The Toronto Wolfpack cheerleaders, known as the SheWolves
Note the cameraman to the right of the photo.

The SheWolves had plenty to cheers about because the Wolfpack beat Oxford 62-12. The team covered itself with glory after becoming the English third tier champions in their inagural season.